ADT Initiates Dividend at $0.125, Plans $2B Buyback

By Michael Aneiro

Those pre-fiscal cliff dividends keep rolling in, with home security company ADT Corp. (ADT) today announcing that it’s initiating a 12.5-cent-per-share quarterly dividend, payable Dec. 18 to shareholders of record on Dec. 10. ADP also launched a $2 billion share buyback program that will run through November 2015 as it reported a 5.2% rise in recurring revenue and and adjusted EPS of 43 cents per share for the fourth quarter.

Here’s part of Bloomberg’s take, courtesy of reporters David Risser and Simon Thiel:

In October, billionaire [George] Soros joined [hedge-fund manager Keith] Meister in urging ADT to buy back about 45 percent of its stock with borrowed money to take advantage of low interest rates. At the time, they were the biggest investors in the company following its spinoff from Tyco International Ltd. (TYC) in September.

And here’s the obligatory company-issued quote from ADT CEP Naren Gursahaney: “Our focus for 2013 is to deliver meaningful shareholder value by leveraging our competitive strengths to accelerate growth and through the efficient deployment of capital.”

Amey Stone is Barron’s Income Investing blogger and Current Yield columnist. She was formerly a managing editor at CBS MoneyWatch, MSN Money and AOL DailyFinance. Her responsibilities included overseeing market coverage and personal finance topics. Prior to those roles, she was a senior writer at BusinessWeek where she authored the Street Wise column online and contributed to the magazine’s Inside Wall Street column. Topics covered included economics, corporate finance, Fed policy, municipal bonds, mutual funds and dividend investing. She co-authored King of Capital, a biography of Citigroup Chairman Sandy Weill. She is a graduate of Yale University and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.